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Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications(London,Thousand Oaks,CA and New Delhi)Vol 1(2):190–209 [1469-6053(200110)1:2;190–209;019035]

Journal of Social Archaeology A R T I C L E

190

Agency,practical politics and thearchaeology of culture contact

STEPHEN SILLIMAN

Department of Anthropology,University of Massachusetts,Boston

ABSTRACTI use this paper to intersect the trajectory of the agency concept in

archaeology. On a theoretical front, I summarize briefly the state of

‘agency’ in archaeology and its deployment in theories of practice.

This opens a space to introduce the concepts of practical politics and

doxa, and I illustrate their effectiveness in addressing issues of social

relations, power, identity and daily practice. I then pinpoint their

particular applicability to colonial and culture-contact studies. On an

empirical front, I turn the lenses of doxa and practical politics to a casestudy in nineteenth-century northern California. My focus is on Native

American involvement in the Rancho Petaluma and the continuity of

lithic practices in this secular colonial sett ing. I conclude that although

lithic practices display a mater ial cont inuity in technology, they are in

fact part of a social change surrounding the politics of practice.

KEYWORDS

agency q California q colonialism q culture contact q doxa q

lithicsq

practice theoryq

Rancho Petalumaq

ranchos

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191Silliman Agency,practical politics and the archaeology of culture contact

s INTRODUCTION

Concepts of social agency have proliferated in many sectors of archaeology,

from the postmodern influences of interpretive archaeology and Marxistapproaches on class and conflict to the methodological individualism of

evolutionary ecology. In this way, it is difficult to chart the theoretical

terrain of the agency concept or the extent of its variable applications (see

Dobres and R obb, 2000). In light of this diversity, I choose to focus on those

approaches that conceptualize social agency under the rubric of ‘practice

theory’, meaning that I am interested in those archaeological approaches

that draw on the theoretical writings of Anthony Giddens (1979, 1984) and

Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990). I limit my discussion to the approaches

inspired by Giddens and Bourdieu because they are commonly deployed inboth prehistoric and historical archaeological contexts, because they com-

prise the core of much contemporary social theory in interpretive archae-

ology and because they inform the case study presented in this article.

I use this article to explore briefly the current state of the agency concept

within social theories of practice. Upon this background, I seek to expand

the applicability of practice theory to archaeology with the concept of

practical politics, which I develop in tandem with the notion of doxa intro-

duced by Bourdieu (1977). Moments of colonialism and culture contact are

ideal venues for teasing apart some of these issues because of the con-frontations of different cultural histories within a nexus of often severe

inequalities. I draw them together br iefly in an archaeological case study of

nineteenth-century colonialism in California. The context is a Mexican-

Californian rancho located north of San Francisco Bay that had a large

Native A merican laboring force during the 1830s and 1840s.

s SOCIAL THEORIES OF AGENCY AND PRACTICE

Over the last 15 years, archaeologists have introduced social theories of

practice to undermine processual archaeologies (Hodder, 1991; Johnson,

1989; Shanks and Tilley, 1987); to highlight political struggles and social

evolutionary processes (Blanton et al., 1996; Joyce and Winter, 1996;

Roscoe, 1993); to study ethnicity and identity (Jones, 1997; Lightfoot et a l.,

1998); and to examine gender (Dobres, 1995; Gilchrist, 1994), space

(Donley-Reid, 1990), technology (Dobres, 2000; Dobres and Hoffman,

1994) and resistance (Shackel, 2000). This list is, of course, only a limited

sample. The focus on the conduct of everyday life, tradition and rout ine hasbeen a methodological and analytical strength of practice-based approaches

because these relate to lived experience and power (Donley-Reid, 1990;

Lightfoot et al., 1998; Meskell, 1998; Pauketat, 2000). Within practice



192 Journal of Social Archaeology 1(2)

theory, social agents are frequently conceived of as individuals with goals,

intent ions and subjectivities and as historical moments in the negotiation of

social structure, strategies and relations. Yet, some archaeologists are

expressing concern that the analytical weight of the latter has crushed

attempts to ‘examine agency in terms of the forward-looking intentionality

of individual lives’ (H odder, 2000: 24). I would argue that such a proposed

reorientation is premature, despite its usefulness in tracking some aspects

of lived experience. Instead, as I discuss below, more attention should be

devoted to sorting out the parameters of action – the alternatives and limi-

tations for an individual in any given social setting (Wobst, 2000: 41).

Although archaeologists using some version of practice theory draw on

the same theoretical source materials of Giddens and Bourdieu, archaeo-

logical concepts of agency tend to segregate into two distinct types. In one

incarnation, social agents are assumed to act strategically and intent ionally

to advance their own interests (Blanton et al., 1996; Joyce and Winter,

1996). Individuals in these interpretat ions tend to be portrayed as rational

actors, maximizing some aspect of economic, political or symbolic capital.

Their motives are frequently seen as autonomous and universal. A more

extreme version of this type of individual action informs some evolutionary

approaches (e.g. Hayden, 1995). This type of individual agent has been

adeptly criticized (Barret t, 2000; Gero, 2000).

At the other end of the continuum are archaeologists who view indi-

viduals acting meaningfully in historical and social circumstances onlypartly of their own making (Barrett, 2000; Dobres and Hoffman, 1994;

Hodder, 1991; Johnson, 1989; Pauketat, 2000; Wilkie and Bartoy, 2000). In

this scheme, individual actions are contextualized within an array of rules

and resources that precede them but that give them opportunity. The dialec-

tic is one between structure and agency (Giddens, 1984). In these perspec-

tives, individuals often conduct their daily affairs in intent ional and strategic

and in routinized, nondiscursive or preconscious ways. To state the common

expression, social agents are both constrained and enabled by structure.

This paper adheres to the second version of agency theory. My theoret i-cal approach holds that social agents often do act with explicit intent and

strategies for accomplishing their objectives, but they also act in ways that

allow them to ‘go on’ in the world (Giddens, 1984). The latter aspect, the

lived experience of frequently nondiscursive action, gives strength to the

label of ‘practice theory’ (Ortner, 1984; see also Pauketat, 2000: 114–15).

Ortner provided the most lucid definition of practice as ‘anything people

do’ (Ortner, 1984: 149), whether discursive or not. The definition is simple

and crisp, but theoretical slippage occurs when anthropologists implicitly

render this definition as ‘everything people do’. The overextension neglectsthe clarification that Ortner provided in the next sentence: ‘[T]he most

significant forms of practice are those with intentional or unintentional

political [emphasis added] implications’ (Ortner, 1984: 149). This point is




not trifling. It would be nearly impossible and highly suspect for anthro-

pologists to study every aspect of personal experience as relevant to social

analysis. Therefore, it is necessary to home in on those practices with

political ramifications, a challenging task in archaeological contexts.

s PRACTICAL POLITICS AND THE ROLE OF DOXA

To investigate the role of practices and their impact on political and social

relations, I argue that two concepts – doxa and practical politics – are useful.

The former demarcates the boundaries of the overtly political by delimit-

ing the taken-for-granted aspects of social interaction, while the latter

serves to widen that which is considered political.

Doxa

Doxa refers to the unquestioned and often unacknowledged shared back-

drop of givens in discourse and social interactions (Bourdieu, 1977: 159–71).

As doxa, ‘the established cosmological and political order is perceived . . .

as . . . a self-evident and natural order which goes without saying and there-

fore goes unquestioned’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 166). Some doxic practices exist

outside the realm of intentionality, as generally defined, because they areinvariant, unquestioned and frequently preconscious. Examples might be

some of the rote, mundane activities of everyday life. In contrast, other

doxic practices are intentional because individuals may share motivations

and life histories, a situation leading to Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) related

concept of habitus as a set of durable dispositions and G iddens’ (1979, 1984)

notion of practical consciousness as a preconscious way to ‘go on’ in the

world. Intentionality may thus lead not to divergent actions, but to virtually

identical ones. Therefore, to sort out the nuances of social agency, doxic

practices need to be identified archaeologically.At a superficial level, doxa appears much like the age-old definition of

culture, but it differs in two important respects. First, doxa operates at a

variety of scales. As used in this art icle, doxa refers to a quality of par ticu-

lar circumstances, materials or social relations rather than to a general state

of existence or societal ‘level’. This contrasts with Bourdieu’s (1977) orig-

inal use. Certain social aspects – dietary habits, bodily att ire, burial practices,

production, exchange, sexual relations – exhibit doxic qualities depending

on the individuals involved or the contexts in which they occur. All have

their own array of acceptability, limits and alternatives, but they vary by anindividual’s gender, age, status, class, ethnic affiliation, sexual orientation

and occupation.

Second, although defined as the shared and unquestioned backdrop of




social interaction, doxa embodies contestation and opinion in its juxta-

position between heterodoxy and orthodoxy. This is probably the only

justification for using the otherwise obtuse term. The ways in which aspects

of the political and social order take on the status of doxa are typically

neither a neutral series of unintended consequences nor total consensus,

although they can be. More frequently, the creation and dissolution of doxa

is a political process, linking it to aspects of ideology (e.g. Burke, 1999:

11–36). When the unquestioned orders of doxa are no longer shared or

when individuals attempt to reify a doxic reality, opinion and action schism

into orthodoxy and heterodoxy. In orthodoxy, individuals attempt to re-

instate, or create a new, doxa because they have a vested interest in that

particular arbitrary order and the complicit silence of discourse around it.

In heterodoxy, individuals accentuate the arbitrariness of doxa for social

change or personal gain – they expose the politics built into doxa or intro-

duce new ones to it. This transformation, or dissolution, of doxa is a highly

charged political and social one in which individuals contest the meanings

of the arbitrary, of the taken-for-granted. The negotiation can occur on the

grand stages of social performance or in the practices of everyday life.

Practical politics

Politics constantly surround, but do not always infiltrate, daily practice. That

is, politics are not always explicit, consequential or even contested in theworld of everyday conduct. This is particularly true in the realm of doxic

practices. If a practice is truly locked within a consensual doxa, it does not

carry political connotations because there are no other alternatives to

action. Yet this begs the question: how many practices truly occur within

doxa, with no divergent opinions or no alternatives? The answer varies by

cultural context, but I would suggest that it closely approximates ‘very few’.

Other questions arise as well: why are there no alternatives? What aspects

of social power are behind this apparent lack of alternatives? Politics are

not static, and studying the process of politicization highlights the move-ments, both subtle and outright, of daily practice in and out of a political

realm as part of social negotiation. These movements, whether rapid or

gradual, mark the fluctuating perimeter of doxa. The shifting edges are

highly pronounced in colonial contexts.

I use the term ‘practical politics’ to refer to the negotiation of politics of

social position and identity in daily practices. In many ways, they are akin

to the infrapolitics discussed by Scott (1990: 183–201) when referring to

individuals’ attempts to maneuver the social terrain within a hierarchical

system. The concept of practical politics broadens the scope of politicalrelevance to include everyday practices since these comprise the lived

experience of individuals. A focus on practical politics and lived experience

renders acts of residence as analytically important as acts of resistance. By




acts of residence, I mean the attempts of individuals to stake out a claim in

their social worlds, even under contexts of oppression and domination, that

may have little to do with outright or even impromptu resistance. As Scott

(1985, 1990) and others have shown, many social agents are not active revol-

utionaries out to usurp the powers that oppress them, even if they want to

be, and individuals frequently organize their daily lives not around taking

over a place but around forging residence in it. ‘Without leaving the place

where he [sic] has no choice but to live and which lays down its law for him,

he establishes within it a degree of plurality and creativity’ (De Certeau,

1984: 30). Plurality and creativity are what give the archaeological record of

colonialism such theoretical promise.

In cases of significantly unequal social relations such as those implicated

in colonialism, the political charge of daily practices can fluctuate along two

inter-related fronts. First, those seeking domination can single out

mundane, everyday activities as a way to control bodies and routines – that

is, practices become nodes in political maneuvering. In its most conspicu-

ous form, the process involves the discipline discussed by Foucault (1979).

Those wielding power at tempt to control the minutiae of daily life as a way

to re-constitute individual subjectivities. Innocuous activities of daily life

become the source of constant scrutiny as they are presumed to comprise

the social essence of particular groups, ethnicities or individuals. They

become politically-charged markers of stereotyped bodies and groups. An

example is the sixteenth- to nineteenth-century Spanish mission system inNorth America that stretched from Florida to California. Spanish padres

attempted to convert indigenous people by prohibiting particular activities,

controlling sexual practices, requiring Catholic rituals and routines and

enforcing labor – all aspects of daily practice (Silliman, 2001).

Second, quotidian practices of daily life take on explicit political signifi-

cance for those conducting them (Lightfoot et al., 1998: 202). These prac-

tices are pathways for exerting social agency; they can express a range of

resistance, compliance or simply ‘getting by’ within rigid power structures.

On the one hand, individuals are aware that their activities are beingwatched. Conducting particular practices can serve as outright resistance,

while not conducting them can demonstrate compliance, at least at a socially

visible level (Paynter and McGuire, 1991: 12). Non-conduct can also repre-

sent a depoliticization of practice – what practices the dominant feel that

they have eradicated, the subordinate no longer consider socially significant

or constitutive. On the other hand, individuals can use both novel and

‘traditional’ daily practices as a forum for reworking identity, often through

the appropriation of material culture. These negotiations may occur far-

removed from anything that might be termed resistance. As Uptondescribed it, ‘invented t raditions reveal the process by which ethnic groups

form themselves by choosing to commodify their identities and to attach

them to equally consciously chosen material signs’ (U pton, 1996: 5; see also




Jones, 1997, 1999). Because individuals experience the world through

everyday conduct, these are the venues for trying to cope with, instigate or

circumvent social change.

s COLONIALISM AND THE RANCHO PETALUMA

In numerous cases worldwide, post-Columbian colonialism propelled many

daily practices into new political fields. Doxic practices of both colonizer

and colonized often fragmented into contested arenas, and other practices

shifted or intensified their political nature. Bourdieu himself stated:

The practical questioning of the theses implied in a particular way of living

that is brought about by ‘culture contact’. . . is . . . the deliberate, methodicalsuspension of nat ive adherence to the world. The critique which brings the

undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into formulation . . . destroys

self-evidence practically. (Bourdieu, 1977: 168)

I prefer the term puncture over destroy to signify the ambiguity and incom-

pleteness of this process. Although ‘contact’altered the unquestioned worlds

(i.e. doxa) of all those involved in or undergoing colonization, numerous

studies have shown that indigenous people reacted to these episodes in

ways that made sense to them (Lightfoot et al., 1998; Milliken, 1995; Sahlins,

1981, 1985; Thomas, 1991). At the same time, colonial encounters vested‘traditional’ alternatives and limitations with new politics. Indigenous indi-

viduals could manipulate precontact power and social relat ions for new

ends, seizing opportunities that may have been denied before (see Sahlins,

1981: 36, 1985: 28 for Pacific cases). In addition, drastic new alternatives and

limitations to act ion may have appeared where only minor ones had been

assumed before in diet, technology, material culture, symbolism,social status,

marriage and sexual relations. Furthermore, the introduction of colonial

material culture provided a novel suite of items for use in social strategies and

relations. Although these items presenced the colonial apparatus, they wereobjects without local history. Native social agents could appropriate these

materials in various forms and combinations as a way to negotiate social

positions and identities (Lightfoot et al., 1998: 202; Thomas, 1991). These

material and social relations all revolve around shifting practical politics.

It might be argued falsely that a perspective on the politicization of prac-

tice in colonial and culture contact settings relegates precontact indigenous

practices to an apolitical, or worse, pre-political realm. The approach might

be read to assume that colonialism bestowed social agency on indigenous

individuals because, before ‘contact’, people had blindly followed culturalprescriptions and norms. Taking Bourdieu (1977: 164, 167) too literally

would support such a claim. However, the conclusion would be incorrect. I

contend that all practices have the potential to intersect politics and that all




individuals have agency, or are social agents (Cowgill, 2000: 52), within the

bounds of doxa. The key is to investigate the changes in practical politics

and in the boundaries of doxa at moments of social transformation, not

only as they comprise change, but also as they envelope daily experience.

Colonial settings simply provide stark episodes of rapid and often violent

social upheaval. The Rancho Petaluma case from nineteenth-century

northern California in the western USA serves as a case in point.

Background

Aside from a handful of coastal landfalls by European explorers in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the official colonial period in Cali-

fornia began with the arrival of Spanish colonists in 1769. These colonists

began to found missions, presidios and pueblos along the coast of California

from San D iego to San Francisco in a tripartite scheme to convert Native

Americans to Catholicism, render them loyal subjects of the Spanish crown

and secure the West Coast of North A merica for Spain (Costello and H orn-

beck, 1989). Indigenous hunter-gatherers of northern California witnessed

the colonial arrival in 1776 with the establishment of Mission San Francisco

de Asìs and the military post of the Presidio de San Francisco where the

modern city of San Francisco now exists (Figure 1). By the early 1800s, three

Spanish Franciscan missions were actively proselytizing, recruiting and

decimating (usually by disease) the indigenous populations that occupiedthe entire ring of the San Francisco Bay and adjoining waterways (Milliken,

1995). In 1823, Mission San Francisco Solano – the last Franciscan mission,

the fifth one in the San Francisco Bay Area and the first one under Mexican

rule – was established in the Sonoma Valley, just east of the Petaluma Valley

(Smilie, 1975). Native individuals seem to have abandoned most of their

villages in the area by this time due to disease and prior missionization by the

established missions, but many Native Americans who had been removed

from the region during earlier missionary efforts returned to help found the

new mission (Smilie, 1975). Missionaries also increased proselytizing effortsinto mountains to the north and river and delta areas northeast of Sonoma.

In 1834, the colonial scene changed dramatically. The Mexican govern-

ment secularized the Franciscan missions, which released many native

people from the mission communities and freed land for secular colonization.

Some California Nat ive American people returned to old villages, some

formed new communities, and others joined the labor forces of nearby

ranchos. Ranchos were land grants offered by the colonial government that

required the recipient to build on and use the land for livestock or agriculture

(Greenwood, 1989; Sánchez, 1986). In the area north of San Francisco, oneresult of the secularization process was the Rancho Petaluma, a land grant

offered to Mariano G. Vallejo by the Mexican government as repayment for

his loyalty and service to the military (Rosenus, 1995). The Rancho Petaluma




covered over 26,700 hectares from the defunct Mission San Francisco Solano

in the east to the Petaluma River in the west . The core of the rancho was the

Petaluma Adobe, an enormous two-storey adobe-brick building built on a

large knoll in the Petaluma Valley. Approximately half of this st ructure

stands today. Archaeological excavation (Clemmer, 1961; Gebhardt, 1962)

and a historical survey map (O ’Farrell, 1848) variably revealed two

addit ional structures, probably corrals, to the northwest of the Petaluma

Adobe and two unidentified buildings in a field a few hundred meters due

east of the Petaluma Adobe, across Adobe Creek.

In addition to its large size, a critical feature of the R ancho Petaluma was

the large number of Native Americans working there from 1834 until the

early 1850s (D avis, 1929; Silliman, 2000). Numbers ranged from 200 to prob-

ably 1000, depending on the year and season (Silliman, 2000: 78). Native

workers were individuals (a) who turned over cattle and land, perhaps

under coercion, to Vallejo to care for in exchange for their labor, (b) who

had been captured in military raids, (c) who formed part of a broader

military and political alliance between Vallejo and local native leaders and

(d) who potentially used the Rancho Petaluma as a stopover in a seasonal

round (Silliman, 2000: 41–3). These factors made life on the rancho a

complex mixture of oppression and opportunity. Ultimately, there were

more native individuals working on the Rancho Petaluma than could be

kept there by physical force. Unlike mission settings, Vallejo and his over-

seers exerted few, if any, overt restrictions on native dress, diet, ritual ormaterial practices as long as rancho work was completed (e.g. Vallejo, 1875:

10–11). Very few non-native individuals lived on the Rancho Petaluma, and

these were typically limited to the majordomo (overseer), Vallejo’s family

from time to time and a handful of artisans who resided in the large

Petaluma Adobe structure. There is no evidence that any of these indi-

viduals intermarried with native workers.

Numerous native individuals worked on the rancho depending on the

agricultural and livestock slaughtering schedules, but some probably

labored year-round as household servants. Duties for native workersincluded herding and slaughtering cattle, plowing and harvesting fields,

manufacturing goods and processing and preparing food (Silliman, 2000:

88–95). Vallejo designed many of these tasks to generate the economic

surplus needed for trade with other colonies and with ships in the San Fran-

cisco Bay, but he earmarked some foods and goods for consumption by his

family, settlers under his care and native workers. Native women usually

prepared food, wove blankets and baskets and worked in the Petaluma

Adobe itself; men were often field hands, slaughterers and vaqueros

(cowboys). The division of labor was also hierarchical depending on experi-ence: those who had mission training were often task leaders or sub-super-

visors, whereas those who arrived from unmissionized villages generally

took assistant roles (Davis, 1929: 136).




Archaeological investigations

From 1996–1998, I conducted an archaeological project to locate and study

evidence of the native workers on the Rancho Petaluma by focusing on the

Petaluma A dobe State Historic Park, a 41-acre parcel of land that preservesthe rancho’s core (Silliman, 2000). D espite my extensive archival research,

I could locate very few documentary sources that touched upon native resi-

dences, origins, diet or daily life (see Silliman, 2000: 71–100 for synthesis of

available materials). As a result, I turned to archaeology for these answers.

Following pedestrian survey, geophysical prospection and surface testing, I

isolated a dense archaeological deposit to the east of the Petaluma A dobe,

across Adobe Creek and in the vicinity of the reputed buildings on the 1848

survey map (Silliman, 2000: 107–15). Upon excavation of single units,

Figure 1 Map of northern California,circa 1835




trenches and a b lock exposure, I determined that the site represented a resi-

dential and refuse area for native workers at the Rancho Petaluma. I dis-

covered no actual residences and no evidence for the presumed adobe

buildings that had once occupied the field, but the presence of substantial

residential debris indicated that living quarters would have been nearby.

These residences were undoubtedly ‘traditional’ housing in the form of

conical thatched structures. Such houses are notoriously difficult to detect

archaeologically, especially in heavily bioturbated soils.

A dense residential midden across the stream from the Petaluma Adobe

contained strong evidence of native domestic and laboring practices in the

1830s–1850s (Figure 2). Other nineteenth-century features approximately

25 m east of the midden included two processing features, a large discrete

Extant Petaluma Adob e

Foundations recoveredarchaeologically

Excavation unit s

Park boundary

Adobe Creek

Roads, paths,and parking lots

50 m N

Refuse/FeatureArea

Midden

Figure 2 Map of the Petaluma Adobe State Historic Park with relevantarchaeological investigations




pile of faunal and other debris, one refuse pit and two potential cooking

features turned into refuse pits (Silliman, 2000: 115–47). All artifacts recov-

ered from the features, midden and general artifact scatter revealed a

combination of Western mass-produced goods such as 1176 glass beads,

2896 glass sherds, 322 ceramics sherds and 1020 metal artifacts and frag-

ments (including 420 nails), and ‘traditional’ native artifacts such as 3009

chipped-stone lithics, 25 groundstones and fragments, 2 shell beads, and 20

worked bone items. All of these items were consistently associated with

each other across the site. Faunal and floral remains were also dense and

abundant, evidencing a mixture of provisioned foods such as cattle, sheep,

wheat, barley and corn with wild foods such as deer, fish, birds, rodents,

acorns, manzanita berries, bay laurel nuts and grass seeds (Silliman, 2000:

264–99). Using a combination of obsidian hydration analysis, manufactur-

ing dates of one ceramic hallmark and one backstamped button and general

date ranges for ceramic wares, metal goods and glass types and colors, I

could attribute the vast majority of artifacts to the 1830s–1850s (Silliman,

2000: 400–3). Some obsidian art ifacts predate the nineteenth century based

on hydration readings, and some mass-produced goods such as wire nails

and particular glass colors postdate the second quarter of the 1800s.

However, these outliers do not detract from the primary conclusion about

native practices during the zenith of the R ancho Petaluma.

Lithics and daily practice

Because of the high diversity and quantity of lithic materials and their

strong association with the numerous other material classes at the site, I

focus my interpretive efforts here on the chipped stone tools and related

debris. They reveal par ticularly salient aspects of practical politics and doxa

in this context.

During excavations, we recovered 3009 lithic art ifacts in the raw material

categories of obsidian (43.3%), microcrystalline silicates (39.4%), fine-

grained igneous stone (8.8%) and others (8.4%) (Silliman, 2000: Table 6.1).These materials were recovered from all excavated areas but, like most

other artifact classes, they were most concentrated in the midden. Manu-

facturing debris and products varied per raw material. Obsidian contained

the full array of reduction and production, including cores, cortical flakes,

interior flakes, angular shatter, worked debitage and formal tools such as

bifaces and projectile points. The microcrystalline silicate and igneous art i-

facts contained the same categories except for the presence of only one

formal tool, an early-stage chert biface. Current evidence from debitage and

tools suggests that obsidian reduction on the site reflects a strong focus onbiface production, but individuals focused strongly on reducing cores with

the microcrystalline silicate and igneous lithic materials (Silliman, 2000:

226–8).




When placed in a social context, the lithic data have much to offer regard-

ing doxa and practical politics at the Rancho Petaluma. I argue that these

lithic practices trace the edges of a fractured doxa, revealing points of

contestation and negotiation. A lthough individuals undoubtedly contested

stylistic or raw material aspects of lithic technology in prehistory, lithic

manufacture as a broad technology had to have rested in the realm of doxa –

it was the accepted way to manufacture hard, durable or sharp implements.

The advent of the colonial period and the involvement of Native A mericans

in the rancho system changed that, as numerous material and technological

alternatives were introduced. Vallejo and his contemporaries in northern

California had reliable access to glass, metal and ceramic goods cour tesy of

numerous trading and whaling ships in San Francisco Bay and adjacent

waters. Yet, in spite of exposure to nineteenth-century industrial and mass-

produced items, native laborers at the Rancho Petaluma remained focused

on lithic technology. As I demonstrate below, the choice was a political one.

I can out line the involvement of lithic practices in practical politics by con-

sidering alternative explanations. The process is crucial because these

alternatives not only circumscribe my interpretation but also once served as

actual alternatives – actions and choices – for individuals in the past.

A potential explanation for the continuity of lithic practices could be the

lack of native access to metal or other tools at the rancho. However, the

assemblage contains metal tools such as fragments of scissors, thimbles,

files, iron kettles, flatware, guns and other items (Silliman, 2000: 341–8).This suggests that metal was available in various forms to the site’s resi-

dents, much like the Western ceramics and glass found in the native

deposits. In addition, native people at the Rancho Petaluma worked for

hours a day plowing and harvesting fields, butchering cattle, making candles

and blankets and cooking and serving food. Given the wealth of Vallejo’s

landholdings and his prime access to material goods, native workers prob-

ably performed these labor duties with products of nineteenth-century

industry.

Another alternative for explaining lithic continuity could be that indi-viduals needed stone tools to complete the required rancho duties in the

absence of sufficient metal tools. Perhaps the presence of 600 native

workers taxed even the wealthy Vallejo’s ability to provide enough tools for

the jobs at hand. Unfortunately, this cannot be addressed fully with the

current archival or archaeological data. The noticeable deficit of metal

knives, cleavers and axes in the assemblage may indicate that the labor over-

seers at the Petaluma A dobe carefully safeguarded these prized tools and

prevented workers from obtaining them, or that they were less likely to

break and be discarded. Yet, the complete absence of any field tools oraccoutrements suggests that native men, who were involved with such tools

on a daily basis, did not introduce these items into the household, quite

unlike the at tempts by native women to incorporate rancho sewing goods




into the home (Silliman, 2000: 416–20). However, even if the metal tool

deficit hypothesis is true , only rancho tasks such as livestock butchering and

hide preparation could have accommodated lithic tools, and it is unlikely

that individuals would have made formal bifacial tools for these jobs since

retouched flakes and steep-sided scrapers generally work better for cutting

and scraping, respectively.

Related to the previous two alternatives is the possibility that native indi-

viduals, probably men, needed stone projectile points for hunt ing wild game

because guns were in restricted supply. Even if true , this alternative would

explain only a small component of the lithic assemblage (i.e. projectile

points and associated manufacturing debris). Despite the strong focus on

cattle for both duty and consumption, the presence of deer in the faunal

assemblage confirms hunting. Rabbit, rodent, fish and bird bones further

round out the non-domestic faunal assemblage, but these were probably

taken with nets and traps (Silliman, 2000: 283–91). Undoubtedly, arrows

were used to dispatch deer , but numerous pieces of lead shot and a handful

of firearms-related artifacts indicate that guns were available, at least to

some individuals during certain times.

With these three alternatives offering less than satisfactory accounts for

the cont inuity of lithic technology, I argue that lithic pract ices were part

of the active daily negotiation of colonialism. Aspects of lithic practices

exited the cracks in doxa. Lithic working and use may have done little to

subvert rancho labor, but they were active ways for individuals to stake outa claim in the material and social world. That is, they helped stake out a resi-

dence in the colonial world, casting traditional technology into new social

orders. Given the control of space and time exerted by labor regimentat ion,

individuals could have manufactured stone tools only during off-work

hours, those times when friends and families regrouped during an early

afternoon siesta or at the end of the work day. Contrary to ‘acculturation’,

these stone art ifacts were conscripted as active materializations, rather than

passive vestiges, of native identity. This is especially significant in light of

the large numbers of ex-mission converts in the labor force who might havebeen part of the Franciscan mission system for at least a generation. Many

might assume that these mission residents had long since replaced stone tool

technology with metal tools, but mission excavations in other parts of Cali-

fornia reveal quite the opposite (Allen, 1998; Deetz, 1963; Hoover and

Costello, 1985).

The raw material used in stone working offers additional insight. The

critical point is that stone tool production was not simply a convenient

decision since lithic sources were not located in the immediate vicinity.

Chert and igneous stones were available semi-locally, but the nearest obsid-ian sources – both primary and secondary deposits – were 23–35 km away

(Silliman, 2000: Figure 6.16). The obsidian indicates that (a) native indi-

viduals on the rancho had seasonal or other opportunities to visit obsidian




sources and/or (b) they maintained exchange relationships with groups

outside the rancho. Given the extensive patterns of trade in nor thern Cali-

fornia during prehistoric and historic periods, the latter is highly probable.

Obsidian may have served as a common material and symbolic currency

linking native people ensnared in the rancho system with those outside of

its reach.

The interest in maintaining access to lithic sources is put into relief when

contrasted with the worked bottle glass assemblage. Like many other col-

onial sites, nat ive individuals at the Rancho Petaluma directed the practice

of lithic technology onto glass bottles. However, in contrast to other

contact-period assemblages in the West such as Colony Ross (Silliman,

1997) or Mission San Antonio (Hoover and Costello, 1985), the modifi-

cation and utilization of bottles at Petaluma involved primarily expedient

use rather than formal tool manufacture. In other words, I discovered no

projectile points or other bifacial tools, although I recovered some shards

with clear bifacial retouch (Silliman, 2000: 339–40). This is significant in light

of the discussion of doxa and practical politics. Given their quantity in the

site assemblage, glass bot tles were numerous and readily available for tool

manufacture, and they are a superior raw material to some of the micro-

crystalline silicates and igneous stones found in the lithic collection. Never-

theless, native laborers sought out actual stone material for the majority of

expedient and formal tool production, despite the distance and presumed

effort involved.

Summary

The breakdown of doxa surrounding lithic practices offered the possibility

of change as individuals encountered different alternatives. The trajectory

of change could have gone in any number of directions, and the presence of

lithic artifacts at the Rancho Petaluma might seem rather like a lack of

change. On the contrary, I argue that the continuity of the material practice

belies the changes in the social practice of making and using the lithic tools.Even though the lithic tools served some functional or economic needs, they

also participated in rancho social relations. It appears that some native indi-

viduals may have consciously chosen these material signs to activate or

solidify a nineteenth-century identity. Given the diversity of lithic products

that are present, from tools to expedient flakes to debitage, both men and

women may have done so. However, men may have been the main ones

who intensified the political nature of lithic practices, choosing to use stone

rather than colonial tools for their everyday tasks or in the household

negotiation of gender or identity. In contrast, women seem to have incor-porated both familiar goods such as grinding stones and introduced items

such as scissors, needles and thimbles that they used in their rancho tasks

(Silliman, 2000: 416–20).




Depending on scale, lithic practices at the Rancho Petaluma reveal

both heterodoxy and orthodoxy. Lithic practices were heterodox in the

pluralistic colonial community where the dominant group (i.e. Mexican-

Californians) controlled much of the material world and where various

indigenous individuals chose to use new technologies and materials. They

were orthodox in segments of the native population where individuals

adhered to a familiar practice, perhaps trying to drive it back into doxa.

Because lithic practices could rest in both realms, they were no longer doxic

and became part of active political and social negotiations. The Rancho

Petaluma is probably not unique in this respect, and other colonial and

contact-period sites in North America with such lithic ‘continuity’ might

warrant closer consideration. I believe this would complement the socially-

informed focus that archaeologists are now developing for studies of

contact-period lithic practices (Bamforth, 1993; Hudson, 1993).

s CONCLUSION

This art icle has explored, albeit briefly, the role of agency in interpreting

indigenous responses to colonial contact. H owever, the theoretical

approach has much broader implications because it focuses on the inter-

relationship of social change and the politics of daily practice. Dependingon social and power relations, daily practices may leave the hazy realm of

doxa and take on a polit ical charge in the negotiat ion of identity, gender

and status. This does not mean the advent of agency, but rather an alter -

ation of its expression. Material change usually denotes social change in

archaeological contexts, but rarely do archaeologists have the opportunity

to see how the lack of material change can reveal actual changes in practi-

cal politics. Historical archaeologists may be in the best position to enter-

tain and evaluate these possibilit ies. Pract ice-as-politics may be more

difficult to sort out from practice-as-doxa in prehistoric than in historical

contexts, but the efforts are necessary in all cases for understanding social

agency.

Acknowledgements

This art icle is a much revised version of one presen ted in 1999 a t the 98th Annual

Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Chicago, Illinois, and I

thank Reinhard Bernbeck for invit ing me to jo in tha t symposium. I would like to

thank the following people for their comments on this manuscr ipt or its earlier

presentat ion: Reinhard Bernbeck, Meg Conkey, Kent Lightfoot , Lynn Meskell,A nne Pyburn, Barb Voss and R ick Wilk. I am especially grateful to R andy

McGuire and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and critical

reading.




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STEPHEN SILLIMAN is an assistant professor at the University ofMassachusetts,Boston.His research interests include colonialism,culturecontact, North American historical and prehistoric archaeology, andsocial theories of practice and labor. He has published recently in His-

torical Archaeology and the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology .[email:[email protected]]

agency, practical politics

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